Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
J Cell Sci. 2012 Jul 1;125(Pt 13):3015-24. doi: 10.1242/jcs.079509. Epub 2012 Jul 13.
Much of our understanding of the biological mechanisms that underlie cellular functions, such as migration, differentiation and force-sensing has been garnered from studying cells cultured on two-dimensional (2D) glass or plastic surfaces. However, more recently the cell biology field has come to appreciate the dissimilarity between these flat surfaces and the topographically complex, three-dimensional (3D) extracellular environments in which cells routinely operate in vivo. This has spurred substantial efforts towards the development of in vitro 3D biomimetic environments and has encouraged much cross-disciplinary work among biologists, material scientists and tissue engineers. As we move towards more-physiological culture systems for studying fundamental cellular processes, it is crucial to define exactly which factors are operative in 3D microenvironments. Thus, the focus of this Commentary will be on identifying and describing the fundamental features of 3D cell culture systems that influence cell structure, adhesion, mechanotransduction and signaling in response to soluble factors, which - in turn - regulate overall cellular function in ways that depart dramatically from traditional 2D culture formats. Additionally, we will describe experimental scenarios in which 3D culture is particularly relevant, highlight recent advances in materials engineering for studying cell biology, and discuss examples where studying cells in a 3D context provided insights that would not have been observed in traditional 2D systems.
我们对细胞迁移、分化和力感知等细胞功能的生物学机制的理解，主要来自于对二维（2D）玻璃或塑料表面培养细胞的研究。然而，最近细胞生物学领域已经认识到这些平面表面与细胞在体内通常所处的拓扑复杂的三维（3D）细胞外环境之间的差异。这促使人们大力开发体外 3D 仿生环境，并鼓励生物学家、材料科学家和组织工程师之间进行更多的跨学科工作。随着我们朝着更接近生理的培养系统研究基本细胞过程的方向发展，明确哪些因素在 3D 微环境中起作用至关重要。因此，本评论的重点将是确定和描述影响细胞结构、黏附、机械转导和信号转导对可溶性因子反应的 3D 细胞培养系统的基本特征，这些特征反过来又以与传统 2D 培养方式显著不同的方式调节整体细胞功能。此外，我们将描述 3D 培养特别相关的实验情况，强调用于研究细胞生物学的材料工程的最新进展，并讨论在 3D 环境中研究细胞提供了在传统 2D 系统中观察不到的见解的例子。
